To the American People – Ricardo Flores Magón (1911)

From ‘Regeneración’, English Section, February 25, 1911, Los Angeles, California, edited by Ethel Duffy Turner

By Ricardo Flores Magón

American people, awake. Lulled to sleep by the clink of the gold coins of your masters, you have not opened your eyes to contemplate the tragedy which is taking place in the south. Awake, people, awake; cease adoring the wealth of your own executioners. Each coin is the link of a mighty chain which enslaves alike Mexicans and Americans, French and Spanish, Japanese and Chinese, all the human race. Therefore our chain is your chain. The problem of hunger is universal.

Awake, American people; you are on the edge of an abyss and your boss, William Howard Taft, is preparing to kick you into it. The Cossacks of your country are directing their steps toward the Mexican frontier in the pretext of preserving the so-called neutrality laws, which your masters have converted into “partiality” laws. Partiality, because they serve to protect a bandit, Porfirio Diaz. ls it to support bandits and assassins and vampires who suck the blood of the people that you hire your expensive legislators to make laws contrary to your own interests? Are you a civilized people or are you barbarous? Answer at once.

The Cossacks whom your master sends to the Mexican frontier are plunging you in disgrace. Yes, they are plunging you in disgrace. Have you not read the orders sent to Simon Berthold by Conrad Babcock, captain of U.S. cavalry troops at Calexico, which order states that all insurgents, armed or unarmed, crossing the line from Mexico will be arrested and held, also that insurgents may not even buy provisions in the United States?

Do you dare to say that is just? Do you even dare to say that it is legal? You know that both law and justice have been given a slap in the face.

Neither just nor legal, it is then simply contrary to all law. By what right are Mexican revolutionists prevented from crossing the line to buy food? Don’t you see in all that simply the desire which your master Taft has for his pal Porfirio Diaz to continue to oppress the Mexican people? But you know well enough that Taft is not responsible. Taft is the instrument of those millionaires before whose grandeur you stand with open mouths. They are Morgan, Rockefeller, all those great men who have their dens in Wall Street, those who command Taft to commit those barbarities.

Is it not distressing that you who have so many schools, that you, who know how to read and write have not yet found out that the rich are your worst enemies?

The rich of your country are compromising you. A telegram has been circulated abroad saying that the United States government wishes to intervene in Mexican affairs, because the revolution is not strong enough to overthrow the assassin Porfirio Diaz. They are tricking you, innocent people. If the United States wishes to intervene In Mexican affairs it is because Diaz has not been able to suppress the revolutionary movement, and as it knows that this movement will put an end to the privileges of Capital, it wishes to give its aid to the despot of Mexico.

And a war of conquest is the idea which is at the bottom of all this; a war of conquest in which will perish the best of your sons, the youngest and the strongest, because we Mexicans are not going to remain still with our arms crossed. We Mexicans will defend ourselves as best we know how, a war of extermination, without pity, without pardon. The worst moment that can be chosen for a campaign of conquest is that in which the people on whom an attempt will be made to conquer are in a war against their oppressors.

Suppose that your masters should succeed in crushing the Mexican people, a thing which will not happen, I assure you, because the Mexicans know how to fight in circumstance such as no other soldier in the world can do; suppose, I say, that we Mexicans are crushed, what are you going to gain by that crazy enterprise?

You will be as much a wage slave as you are now, with the difference that your chains will bear harder on you than they do now, because your masters will be more powerful, for wars of conquest are made only for the benefit of the rich. Bear in mind that the American millionaires do not want to have the Mexican proletarian freed, because they find in Mexico a country in which they may pay a few cents a day to the workers and treat them as beasts of burden.

The Liberal revolution desires to emancipate the Mexican worker, and that is not agreeable to the masters. The Liberal revolution also wishes to give the land to the people, and that also is as little agreeable to your masters, because then there will be no men to work for the gain of the masters, whether they be Mexican, America or any other nationality.

Awake, American people. Understand at last that your rulers are like all the rulers of the world: the gendarmes [police] of the capitalists.

Awake and go out and meet your bold petty officials, and prevent them from compromising you, from covering you with shame, for it is shameful for you to pay soldiers and functionaries that they may aid a foreign despot in holding in servitude an entire people.

If you do not do this, aside from being barbarous, your inaction will serve only to rivet your chains.

Resolution

From ‘Industrial Worker’, April 27, 1911, Spokane, Washington

We, Industrial Workers of the World, and other workers, assembled at San Diego, Calif., this 9th day of April, do censure the action the United States Government in sending troops to the Mexican border for the avowed purpose of aiding to suppress the present Mexican insurrection.

As a means to stop this hurling of one part the working class against another part of the working class, whether in an international war or an insurrection, we call upon the workers in the department of transportation to ORGANIZE INDUSTRIALLY, so that the movements of the armed hirelings of the capitalist class may be stopped, we also call on all workers in the department of communication, post office workers, telegraphers, etc., to organize in ONE BIG UNION, revolutionary in aim, in order to cooperate with the transportation workers and cripple the capitalist military power. We think that the only solution to the great problems that now confront the working class is for all the workers to organize in one great REVOLUTIONARY UNION OF THE WORKING CLASS.

We, the Industrial Workers of the World also condemn the wholesale murder of the miners of this country and the criminal negligence of the mine owners in failing to provide safety appliances in the mines of America. We think that the lives of human beings are million times more important than the profits of the mine owners, and we APPEAL TO THE MINERS, for the sake of their families and of humanity, to wake up and open their eyes, and to manifest their intelligence by organizing in one big industrial union of miners, without contracts and without craft or district divisions, and COMPEL the capitalist exploiters to safeguard the lives of the workers.

We further call upon the workers of the world to unite with each other, for the purpose of preventing wars, and to better their economic and social conditions, to overthrow the capitalist system and to carry on production after capitalism shall have been overthrown.

Carried unanimously.

Stanley M. Gue, Secy.